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Google has acquired the data of failed US airline Spirit

theregister.com

361–370 of 457 posts

Re: Google has acquired the data of failed US airline Spirit

#361
post #335
post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are exceptional cases, detrimental to both you and the company. Company already swallowed a pretty serious loss, in that case arguably common sense is to let it go, sometimes sh*t happens.

If they truly were exceptional that would be fine. But long delays happen a lot , and I am sure there are things airlines could do to improve that like maintain the planes better so they aren't grounded as often and having backup planes so that if one has problems they can put customers on a different one.

Like back-up planes at every airport?

Re: Google has acquired the data of failed US airline Spirit

#362
post #224
post #10

> Google bought itself 100 million emails and 500 million items from Microsoft Teams, 17 million OneDrive files and 20.5 million items from SharePoint. The search giant also now owns over 30 million recorded customer service calls, and more than 15 million customer service chat records. 600,000 ServiceNow tickets are another element of the collection, along with 13.7 million active emails addresses from Oracle’s Resp…

None of that customer data is included in the purchase. Page 18 of the linked court document is the source of these record counts, and on the right is a "Google's Data Purchase Request" column that lists all of this "Customer Behavior" data as "not included". The Register is not a serious publication and completely missed this. Other outlets reporting this story do not include the claim that customer data is included…

>Register is not a serious publication

Do you have a source to back this up? The register has been covering IT since before most people here were born, and literally invented BOFH.

Re: Google has acquired the data of failed US airline Spirit

#363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Truth is even weirder. plenty of growth is possible but modern liberal democracy requires that all progress must be contingent on the production of enormous amounts of text that nobody would ever read. 3 years ago, the Wall Street journal covered a company trying to use AI to generate documents required for the approval of new nuclear reactor reactor designs, which sounds dangerous, until you get to the point where t…

It seems reality is trying really hard to outcompete even the weirdest sci-fi dystopias.

Today we are living this dystopian life. Imagine you train an llm on all the millions of complaints that say comcast or some other semi-disfunctional company gets. Or police reports of accidents. Or suicide reports, or any of the endless human misery that is out there in the world.

Even though I'm fortunate in so many ways to be in the west - even with the current destructive us government situation, the world is still full of endless misery that I don't ever experience. Like someone living in a war torn country, Gaza, lots of other places.

Re: Google has acquired the data of failed US airline Spirit

#364
I wonder how this is treated in terms of consent (at least from a GDPR perspective in the EU), even if I gave my data to Spirit, I did not consent to it being shared with Google unless they explicitly said they would share it with that partner and I agreed. Surely they can't just retroactively change the scope of consent for data sharing?

Re: Google has acquired the data of failed US airline Spirit

#365

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Modern corporations have learned that the best way to do shady things is to make it very clear that such things are against policy and absolutely forbidden, and then to also make it very clear that breaking policy is the only way to actually get your job done. That way they still get all the benefits of doing shady stuff, and if it ever comes to light then they can fire some scapegoats and explain that this was again…

this isn't even a "modern corporations" thing, at least in my experience. i remember ~25 years ago being on-call with a work truck. we were absolutely not allowed to speed, at all, ever. we also absolutely had to be at the customer's site within 45 minutes of being called. guess how many of my sites were >45 minutes away when traveling the legal speed limit.

I was thinking longer term. It feels like something from recent decades, whereas a century ago the boss would just outright tell you to do the bad thing. That's just my vague impression of the matter. Maybe this sort of thing goes back forever. In any case, excellent example, exactly the sort of thing I mean.

Re: Google has acquired the data of failed US airline Spirit

#367
The most likely outcome of AI + data buildup is a system of perfect price discrimination. Models will know exactly the absolutely maximum you'd be willing to pay for a service, and price everything offered to you at one cent less. All consumer surplus is siphoned into the hyperscalers.

Re: Google has acquired the data of failed US airline Spirit

#369
post #3

How the fuck is that even remotely legal? ... "deidentified" my ass.

Ah, but Google promised to remove PII they found in this deidentified dataset, so worry not. > If you’ve flown Spirit and worry that Google will soon know about a testy conversation you had with the airline’s call center, you’re being told not to worry. The court filing says the data was deidentified before being put on sale and Google has promised to scrub any PII it finds in the trove.

Honestly would trust Google more than any other entity to de-identify the data properly.

Re: Google has acquired the data of failed US airline Spirit

#370
post #19

About twenty years ago, I was taking a flight back from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil to the US. In the middle of the night the pilot got on the loudspeaker and said "hi! Having some engine trouble, so we are landing in Manaus." Manaus is in the middle of the Amazon. Needless to say, a bit scary to hear that, but we landed without issue. They told us we had two choices: the nice hotel with a shared room, or the lesser nice…

I'll never understand this attitude toward airlines. What did you want them to do in this situation? Keep flying the plane with engine issues so you could make your important meetings? It sounds like the airline did the right thing here but you were still mad?

They are supposed to make sure this doesn't happen. Or if it does have better recovery.

Don't skimp on maintenance, make sure you have planes that can do divert in time.

If there was engine troubles in the middle of the ocean would it still be okay?

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